Matthias Alfen’s story begins even before his birth, as it was strongly influenced by his family’s experience during World War II. His grandfather Klemens Alfen (1894-1955) was an accomplished painter and photographer, recognized for his landscape photography and for his technique (Special Honors for Excellence in Photo-Print Technology, 1932).  He enjoyed the friendship and support of many in the artistic community, a community largely influenced by its German Jewish members. Having lost his entire circle of friends under Nazi oppression, and struggling in post-war Germany, which had nothing to offer an artist like him, Klemens took his own life.

Above from left to right: Self-portrait of Klemens Alfen (1946), Street Entertainer Post-war Germany by Klemens Alfen, Special Honors for Excellence in Photo-Print Technology, 1932

After this tragedy, Matthias’ Father Godwin Alfen tried to rally and continue the family tradition of art in the town of Aschaffenburg by reestablishing the photography business. Matthias’ mother Hildegard was also a master photographer and she and Godwin started a family, eventually raising four boys. Matthias, the third child, born half an hour before his fraternal twin brother, was surely affected by the atmosphere in the home. Conversations at the dinner table centered on art, photography and sculpture. The presence of his grandfathers’ paintings and the stories told about him made a deep impression on the young boy. In their grief over the untimely death of the family’s patriarch, Alfen’s parents were certainly hoping that one of the four boys would show artistic promise.

Alfen often accompanied his father on early morning shoots, which provided him with lessons about light and composition. He also recalls the family’s visits to local art shows and museums, and that his father bought local artists’ work, whenever the tight budget allowed, signaling to his children the importance of art.

As a child, Alfen truly enjoyed drawing and sculpting. Some of his early childhood woodcarvings and a sculptural head illustrate the young boys inclination. His art teachers confirmed his enthusiasm and fellow pupils often asked Alfen to finish their art projects in order to get better grades.

From an early age, Alfen enjoyed working with his hands and developing his ideas. The endless fields and woods behind the family’s house provided fertile ground for building amazing tree houses and digging extensive tunnels and helped him form a deep connection to nature and the physical world. For some time he was obsessed with flying machines. He designed and created many gliders and built them from raw materials, as there was no money for buying model sets with remote controls. His mother was alarmed to find out that her son had no schoolbooks in his room, but rather a mess of sketchbooks and bags of red clay. Preferring to roam around the fields with his sketchbook rather than hanging out in front of the television endlessly watching soccer like his three brothers, the young Alfen knew that his life would be in the arts.

Above from left to right: Matthias' Early Woodcarvings and First Head; Young Alfen with Self-made Airplane; Porcelain Head of a Woman

At around the age of 16 he worked for some weeks as an assistant at his uncle’s art studio. Fritz Koenig (probably best known for his large metallic sculpture The Sphere, originally situated between the world Twin Towers, now at the September 11 Memorial. He helped to create a large sculpture in plaster. The lofty studio and prestige of the sculptor gave the young Alfen a vision for his own future. Alfen, who would have welcomed a mentor, was disappointed when his uncle became paranoid and broke off their relationship. The only person besides his parents who supported his early artistic endeavors was his godfather, Fritz Schumm, who bought the young artist art supplies and purchased several of his early works. So, in spite his grandfather and uncle being serious and accomplished artists, Alfen had to forge his path alone, relying on his own strength and sense of destiny.

Immediately after finishing high school in 1984, Alfen enrolled in the Master school for stone carvers in his hometown of Aschaffenburg. The school principle Professor Rager was a tough but caring teacher and helped Alfen learn how to execute ideas in stone. A six-month internship at the foundry Grundhöfer, Niedernberg followed.

Now ready to leave the quaint, idyllic town of Aschaffenburg (birthplace of fine arts legends Matthias Grünewald (1470-1528)  and expressionist painter Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) Alfen’s next destination was the Berlin Art Academy (Hochschule der Künste). At that time, West Berlin was still an island surrounded by communist East Germany, the wall containing it creating an outsider ambiance that attracted artists and musicians such as David Bowie and Joseph Beuys.

In 1987, after passing the rigorous portfolio review and 3-day entrance exam, Alfen enrolled in the fine arts program. Five productive years followed; independent and already chafing at authority, the sculptor pursued his work intensely. Professors left the young driven artist to his own devices as he worked to create his abstract oeuvre. Professor Dietmar Lemcke [Born 1930] even approved a school grant to fund the building of one of Alfen’s early large sculptures (Kreisornament, 1990). Even as a student, the young artist had a promising start, with a solo show at the House am Lützowplatz and at the gallery Noé.

Alfen’s work had begun to be recognized by the arts establishment: Professor Dr. Kurt Grützmacher praised his work in the essay ‘Dialogue Between Form and Space; Commentary on Sculptures by Matthias Alfen’ and art critic and Professor Dr. Hermann Wiesler discussed his sculpture in Bilderleben II Texte zur modernen Kunst, Kunst und Künstler 1992-1999.

Unlike most of his fellow students at the art institute, Alfen was an independent thinker, who followed his own muse rather than allying himself with the famous artists who were his professors. This independence was rewarded when the federal government of West Germany purchased one of his sculptures (a bronze called Komposition II - 1990, as Alfen was completing work on his degree (Meisterschüler der Kuenste), which he received with highest honors.

Alfen planned to leave Berlin to emigrate to the United States. The destination of his dreams was the great mecca for the arts; New York. But just as he was preparing to leave, the City of Soest, Westphalia invited him to be their artist-in-residence for the year 1992-1993. For one year the city offered him a beautiful house with a studio and an elaborate exhibit of his art with a publication including text by art critic Hermann Wiesler. During this year the local newspapers gave almost constant updates on the artist’s progress and a special report on TV placed Alfen in the ranks of other well-known artists from Soest such as Wilhelm Morgner (1891-1917) and Paula Moderson-Becker (1876-1907). Galerie Clasing in Münster put on a solo exhibit of Alfen‘s work and eventually, the city commissioned him to create a large bronze sculpture to be placed in the center of town.

In 1994 he was awarded the Lee Krasner-Jackson Pollock grant out of New York. It was finally time to make the move. With a large container of artwork, Alfen moved to the United States and settled in suburban Connecticut.

The initial years in the States were harsh; the early success in Berlin and Soest was followed by the disinterest of the New York Art world. Alfen faded into obscurity, yet he continued working feverishly to develop his art. His workspace in the basement of a duplex rental was a far cry from the ample skylit studio at the Berlin Art academy.

He struggled on. He supported himself by doing odd jobs, teaching at a local art school and working as a physical therapist. The latter job eventually came to inform his sculptural work: He began to explore the human body as a mobile sculptural structure; a different but complementary perspective to his study of anatomy for figure drawing at the art academy.

During these years Alfen worked deep into the night in his studio. Late one night something extraordinary occurred: he witnessed a cicada hatching directly in front of him. What would have been a banal incident to most mesmerized Alfen. He was struck by the realism of the freshly hatched, still yellow insect next to its old shell, a sarcophagus and a body.

The symbolism of the event spoke to him. The artist working in obscurity for decades finally emerging into the daylight. The Menschenfossil series followed: Negative imprinted convex forms alternating with positive protruding forms. These represent a drastic shift in the artist’s work. The art critic Donald Kuspit writes about this breaking away from the prior path: “The ruthless split in Alfen’s bodies and heads, indicating a self divided against himself--a self that is a precarious structure of opposites, and thus perpetually on the verge of coming apart--suggests the inherently traumatic character of human existence. The split implies that the threat of disintegration is innate. But without inner integrity or wholeness, the outside world is also threatening, which is perhaps why many of Alfen’s male figures face it with clenched fists and tensed muscles. They are ready to do battle with it because there is nothing they can do about the conflict built into them."

Above from left to right: Dante's Inferno - Menschenfossil (mixed media); Standing Woman - Menschenfossil (mixed media); Head of Woman (Porcelain)

The wall mounted relief structures slowly developed into freestanding sculptures.

In 2003 Alfen was included in an art show at the Garth Clark Gallery on 57th Street and was reviewed as follows by Ken Johnson in the New York Times. “Matthias Alfen makes finely modeled and glazed works in which multiple faces -- alternately convex and concave -- are weirdly conjoined.” It seemed that the initial lack of interest in Alfen’s work was shifting. Robbin Zella director and curator at the Housatonic Museum of Art took interest in his work and put on an extensive solo show at the museum in 2005.

Installation Views - Housatonic Museum of Art Solo Exhibit

Art critic Donald Kuspit praised Alfen’s work and described its impact. He notes, “Alfen’s figures suggest the inevitability of insanity in a violent world. His heads protest it even as they embody it. They are a major contribution to--a brilliant extension of--the “art of the scream”, as German Expressionism was called when it emerged at the troubled beginning of the twentieth century.” Judy Kim at that time curator of the Brooklyn Museum of Art also acknowledged Alfens work: “How do we decipher this enigmatic work that is both so simple and still such a puzzle? Formally it embodies and expresses duality and oneness; it is literally a figure that is divided yet one. The title and the physical pose of the work seem to suggest a man caught in a balletic stumble—seemingly in a futile yet instinctive attempt to break a fall, a fall that was perhaps not inevitable but impossible to stop once set in motion. And what of the curves? Do they signify the inner contradictions, conflicts, or struggles within oneself? Or, are they simply a convention created by Alfen to convey and accentuate the movement of a rotating body as it falls through the air? As with all great works of art, falling man succeeds in deeply engaging a viewer and evoking more questions than answers.”  

Again during a late night in his studio Alfen had a revelation: Some of his larger figures are made out of lightweight foam and have separate limbs. As he was playing with the arm of one of the figures, he saw new possibilities. What about creating sculptures that move? Thus was born the body mobile series: sculptural pieces, which the artist could wear and animate; a movable gypsy art form, with no limitations in space or time.

His pieces occupied the sidewalks of New York City and became part of the rich multicultural tapestry of the City. Eventually Getty pictures and Reuters news took notice, and even Timeout magazine wrote about this unusual art form, part plastic arts, part performance art. The sculptor had become his own sculpture. Walking in the body mobile suites was dangerous and a fall from the 7’ tall mobile foot terminated the artist’s acrobatic art quest. 

He was interested in making the transition from the negative to positive forms of his sculptures more effortless, so he created a surface that was as smooth and precise as possible. The mirror surfaced sculptures started to attract increasing attention. Gallery owner Dmitry Shchukin took note of Alfen’s sculptures in the fall of 2015 and dedicated a solo show to his work in March of 2016 to. The Shchukin gallery, established in the 1980’s and with a presence in Moscow, Paris and New York, has been connected to art history since Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin (1854-1936) made history with his collection of Impressionistic and Post-Impressionistic art.